Pretty sure it still absorbs 75% of an incoming ability before checking to see whether or not it has reached the breaking point.

Raid-wide meteor strike is about to hit the raid for 400K fire damage per person.
Everyone stacks up
Just before the meteor hits, AMZ is popped.
AMZ absorbs 75% of the damage - 300K per person, everyone takes 100K fire damage each.
AMZ checks to see whether it has reached the damage cap, it has, it dissipates.

^^ That's an ideal, and very situational scenario that assumes there haven't been any other little DoTs or random bits of damage being absorbed before the raid-wide ability lands. Because the meteor strike that's described above hits everyone at the same time AMZ doesn't check the amount of damage taken per player before breaking - it simply absorbs 75% of the first hit (which is everyone) and then checks/breaks.

EDIT - None of that makes any difference whatsoever, it's still a seriously poor ability which is far too situational. Should still be a localised magical damage reduction but, say 35% for 8 seconds without a limit

No,; This is a misunderstanding of the ability.

Think of it as a shared AMS, no more no less. Just like your own AMS will never absorb more than its cap, AMZ won't, either. It's just laggy between the players, allowing all of them to absorb up to its cap if it happens at the same time.

Think of it as a shared AMS, no more no less. Just like your own AMS will never absorb more than its cap, AMZ won't, either. It's just laggy between the players, allowing all of them to absorb up to its cap if it happens at the same time.

You could be right - will have to agree to disagree because I CBA looking for proof right now. As far as I'm aware it can stop way more than the damage cap per person, mitigating 75% of an initial hit, unlike AMS

quote from EJ, admittedly this was back in cata but don't think it has changed since then:

Anti-Magic Zone:
AMZ is the best utility an Unholy DK brings to a raid, and is alone a good enough reason not spec Frost. When used correctly, this will be your raid's strongest defensive CD. Do not be fooled by the tooltip to think it will only absorb the stated amount of damage. In reality, it will first absorb 75% of the next magical attack, and only THEN, if the amount absorbed exceeded the stated amount, it will vanish. Therefore, it works best when soaking single high-dmg attacks, and fails miserably soaking multiple low-dmg attacks.

Originally Posted by Avatar Killer

AMZ absorbs 75% of incoming spell damage to all targets inside of it period. End of that

Then it does a second check. Was that total damage adding all targets more than i can absorb. If answer is yes then bubble is gone. If no then the bubble stays.

Again, it's almost a moot point - situations like this are so few and far between that it generally ends up being eaten away in a couple of ticks of a random magical ability. If you DO get situations like elementium bolt/flame scythe then it can be awesome, otherwise it's generally pretty poor.

You could be right - will have to agree to disagree because I CBA looking for proof right now. As far as I'm aware it can stop way more than the damage cap per person, mitigating 75% of an initial hit, unlike AMS

quote from EJ, admittedly this was back in cata but don't think it has changed since then:

Anti-Magic Zone:
AMZ is the best utility an Unholy DK brings to a raid, and is alone a good enough reason not spec Frost. When used correctly, this will be your raid's strongest defensive CD. Do not be fooled by the tooltip to think it will only absorb the stated amount of damage. In reality, it will first absorb 75% of the next magical attack, and only THEN, if the amount absorbed exceeded the stated amount, it will vanish. Therefore, it works best when soaking single high-dmg attacks, and fails miserably soaking multiple low-dmg attacks.

Again, it's almost a moot point - situations like this are so few and far between that it generally ends up being eaten away in a couple of ticks of a random magical ability. If you DO get situations like elementium bolt/flame scythe then it can be awesome, otherwise it's generally pretty poor.

This is correct on how it works, look at mechanics like Ultraxion Hour of Twilight soaking, H Madness bolt soaking, or even as current as Lei Shi for tanks.

It absorbs 75 percent of the damage of 1 attack, if attackDamage > absorbLimit then AMZ disappears, if not it stays for absorb limit, which is why it isn't good for soaking breaths (that do X amount of damage every second for X seconds) or Auras (same concept as breaths).

Wouldn't mind it being a bit better, but it's still awesome for big magic blows on the raid, since it does absorb 75% of the full damage-income in that blow, and then disappear.
Close to worthless at small constant damage.
Would rather prefer the rune tap-glyph back, than improved AMZ, but wouldn't complain either if they changed it.
Do feel a bit annoying not to be able to help the raid much.

I'm pretty sure ivan is right, i can't actually pull out numbers but from what i've seen on ragnaros, madness, elegon that's the way it works (on ragnaros amz was better that any raid CD when the seeds of corruption exploded after their landing). Lei chi is a good example but i never actually took it on this boss because vengeance makes lichborne really awesome

For meagera the breath works like a dot on itself and, furthermore, if you had the red head dot still ticking on you, you couldn't see if it really absorb 75% of a single tick damage.
We are currently progressing on durumu so i never tried lei shen, but from i've seen of the mechanics it could be tested on static shock

It should be pretty easy to test how it works if you're unsure. Just get naked and use it while dueling a caster that can crit for more than your health. When naked, your health should be rather low anyway.

If it absorbs 75% of the hit, vmagik is right. If it absorbs the hit up to 75% of your health, Mione is right.

make it baseline for blood dks, ramp up the absorb a bit, and take it away from frost/UH. dps shouldnt get powerfull raid cd's, tanks should dragonsoul tier status. making it better now forces every dk into a non choice of talent on any magic dmg fights. that's bad

Wouldn't it be far more useful as a utility CD to have it operate like a Devo Aura than to absorb 75% of one attack? I mean, how often per tier do we have "giant meteor crashing down and dealing a fuckton of damage in one massive hit" fights? One? Maybe two? For most heavy CD phases (Feng, Elegon, Will, Bladelord, Garalon, Windlord, Ambershaper, Empress, Elite Protectors (at the end), etc etc they are a decent amount of damage coming out that is over 10-20seconds. Those fights are the ones I just listed off the top of my head.

Now if we say AMZ works only against magic, then that's ok, imo. It's still a decent utility that will allow us DK's to bring SOMETHING to the table. Most fights where I have to drop AMZ it lasts for about .7seconds like in Meg or Elegon or Feng or Ambershaper. It's an incredibly minor CD that borders on useless except for the teeny-tiny small amounts of fights that have one big magic damage spike. I don't know. It's better than nothing, don't get me wrong, but I personally believe that it could be more useful without being ridiculous.

No doubt it would, but at what point does it become a choice talent and when does it become mandatory?

If it worked like a blanket dmg reduction talent, even for just magic, it would be mandatory for any semi-serious raid comp.

Not necessarily, my own raid comp has plenty of cooldowns, with a warrior, pally, priest, and druid. It's not like we are lacking. It would be a useless talent on fights like Windlord simply because most of the damage is physical. And unless there is a portion of a fight where everyone is tightly stacked, it would also be useless to due its small range. There aren't a huge amount fights with the high magic damage and the availability to stack where this could be used. But the times that it CAN be used, it should be able to help out in some noticeable way, and not just a drop in the bucket in terms of mitigation.

The fights where it cannot be use effectively as a raid CD, the talent could simply be changed to something else like purgatory. I rarely use purgatory simply because of the heals I can use on my myself and effective CD use, that I rarely die unless it's a wipe. So if I'm speccing into anyway, I'd like it to be something that makes a difference, if not, then give me something that does.

Change Gorefiend's Grasp so that it is a "place-able" AoE such as DnD, add a glyph that allows for it to hit friendly targets instead of enemy targets (restricted to those in party, raid, etc. etc. basically mass lifegrip) and change AMZ back to being dropped on the DK, so that it is no longer a place-able AoE. Make it absorb a standard 30% magic damage for, I don't know, 7 seconds? This increases the utility of Gorefiend's Grasp (outside of "Hey let's use this ability to stack adds and that's all it'll ever be used for") and decreases AMZ's utility in some situations, but increases it greatly across the board. That's just what I would do, at least.

Not necessarily, my own raid comp has plenty of cooldowns, with a warrior, pally, priest, and druid. It's not like we are lacking. It would be a useless talent on fights like Windlord simply because most of the damage is physical. And unless there is a portion of a fight where everyone is tightly stacked, it would also be useless to due its small range. There aren't a huge amount fights with the high magic damage and the availability to stack where this could be used. But the times that it CAN be used, it should be able to help out in some noticeable way, and not just a drop in the bucket in terms of mitigation.

The fights where it cannot be use effectively as a raid CD, the talent could simply be changed to something else like purgatory. I rarely use purgatory simply because of the heals I can use on my myself and effective CD use, that I rarely die unless it's a wipe. So if I'm speccing into anyway, I'd like it to be something that makes a difference, if not, then give me something that does.